I very much like the professors statement about fighting climate change leading to an abundance of cheap energy, that is how it should have been sold from day one and while I agree with some of what the post says I still think talking in terms of per-capita emissions has a role
I think this maybe comes from me living in Australia, where outside the Republicans our Conservative Coalition Partys (confusingly for Americans the senior partner is called The Liberal Party) are the most climate-skeptic party of Govt in the developed world and for 20 years now any time there is talk of making the changes needed to fight climate change in this country (like during our Carbon Tax debates and the ensuing decade long climate-wars, where climate stood in for social conservatism in our version of your culture wars) the constant riposte from the Coalition Opposition, then Govt (which reversed the Carbon Price) was "but China"
That was seriously there main argument and it really worked with the Australian ppl, especially suburban ring voters who decide our elections, they would be asked 'why should we close down coal mines, costing jobs, then pay higher power bills (this was before the big reduction in solar and wind prices) when China will increase their carbon emissions by more every year, building more coal fired power plants than we have as a country each and every year for the next decade" it was a really tough argument to fight back against, so the 'Per Capita" framing was the only thing climate action activists had left that had any purchase with those voters (the educated inner-urban electorates were already on-board, but they were, until this year when they finally developed some self-respect, died in the wool Liberal voters for economic reasons, despite the fact the Lib/Nat Coalition used them as rhetorical punching bag for decades 'inner city latte sippers' 'middle class snobs who don't respect good wholesome true Aussies working in the mines or the steel industry' that sort of stuff you are all so aware of
So while I see some good points int his post, I still think 'per-capita' as a role to play in the campaigning arm at least
Wind/solar etc. was sold as not only a better but also a cheaper alternative in the 70ies - when oil prices were high. When oil became (considerably) cheaper that advantage went away and with it to enthusiasm for green energy on a larger scale.
Some projects continued like the inter-cables bringing excess (greener) energy from Scandinavia to Europe etc.
I agree, especially when we get to the point of hectoring and chiding individuals. However, in a democracy changing government policy requires changing enough individual voters’ attitudes, even though governments may run ahead or behind their populace. Arguably, the US being such a high per capita emitter is an indication that there is more political work needed to change attitudes of Americans than say European democracies, but that might be a spurious argument. And even then the best way to change those attitudes is not to focus too much on personal consumption/emission habits.
Europeans have smaller homes in walkable cities and use public transit more. I don't think they did this to be environmentally friendly, they just prefer that lifestyle.
A lot of Americans do too, if you judge by home prices in walkable / transit-oriented areas compared to non-walkable areas. A small component of decarbonizing might be to allow more housing to be built in walkable American cities, so that people who WANT to live a low-carbon lifestyle can do it. This is more of an opportunity, not a sacrifice (except for the nimbys). But since we will have to decarbonize our car centric suburbs anyway, we can get to net zero without this, probably.
I think allowing more housing in walkable cities could be a huge part of getting to net-zero, especially if those housing policy changes are paired with a few other policies.
For example, here in Washington State, our building code council has (basically) said new commercial buildings need to be all-electric, and it looks like they'll soon do the same for residential buildings. Once those rules go into effect, every time a real estate parcel is redeveloped the economics of owning and running a gas grid get worse for the gas utility. So, housing policy that speeds up redevelopment in favor of transit-oriented development doesn't just reduce transportation emissions; it also speeds up the demise of the gas utility business model. Ordinary homeowners taking on electrification projects with Inflation Reduction Act money should have a similar effect.
What's more, if our state legislators also reform gas utilities' "obligation to serve" to legalize acceptable escape routes for these companies (e.g., pruning branches, converting to thermal utilities), then the gas utilities might have an incentive to reduce emissions in existing buildings faster than a mandate could get the job done, simply to avoid stranded assets so their business can survive.
I live now in semi-rural IL where a lot of development was recently done/is being done. I see with horror what is built: shops where low-rise apartment building should have been, parking lots where shops and a small park could have been (with a parking garage). Three-lane roads, already congested a lot of the time - why no light rail ? If you do not have a car no way you can shop here for food, visit doctor/dentist - nothing walkable or suitable for bicycles (except for a nature path).
Why no light rail? It sounds like your community will have a hard time even paying for a basic fixed-route bus service.
To learn about the basic details of what makes transit service effective, consultant Jarrett Walker at humantransit.org has broken it down into easy-to-explain principles of what makes service useful.
One concept Walker developed was the "transit triangle." Too many advocates and opponents of transit get tripped up on the density-ridership relationship, thinking that some level of density is necessary to produce ridership and no city has it or will allow it to the level to succeed.
The three points of the triangle are development (density as well as a walkable urban form), ridership and service. The big problem is that many communities are unwilling to spend money on the operating costs to make transit service useful. Frequency and span of service determine whether someone will ride transit more than density. (There are some comparisons of U.S. and Canadian cities of alike populations and densities; Canadian cities will almost always perform better. These comparisons aren't of the megacities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver; these are of small and midsize cities that run buses only).
With no plan for rail or other form of public transportation the places I live & shop, are not built "dense" enough to be walkable. This country needs more houses, but will run out of space to build them if the wasteful way of developing land continues.
I lived in the CA Central Valley, two cities were intertwined - one big, one small. Both had public transportation, but the systems got each financed in a different way. The result: they had to keep separate schedules, could not have continuous services all through ten area.
Interestingly, Americans usually tell me why things cannot be done.
There's no magic "density" number to determine walkability.
The problem comes from two places: parking-first design and zoning. These do more than anything to hamper density and make walking a hard slog.
Parking often takes away productive land from residences or business activities, and land uses are scrutinized over how much car traffic something will produce. Parking is seen as the solution. Also, parking must be provided for the peak of usage. For a shopping center, that is usually the Friday after Thanksgiving. Most other times, the lots don't come anywhere close to full.
Zoning has been around much longer, and we have no lived memory of why zoning has been imposed and we always thought cities were settled this way.
There's more information about this, and how to change it, on StrongTowns.org .
Well, there's spoken policy, and then there's revealed policy. To listen to Texas politicians, it's fossil fuels forever. But Texas has very high installs of wind power and solar power, and is rapidly decarbonising.
Texans are going to wake up one year soon to find their emissions have declined to nil. They won't care, but they'll like the low power and transport costs.
Everyone gets it. The problem is that the solutions are not viable yet. Normal people can’t afford a Tesla or to convert their home to solar. Natural gas is plentiful and has a fully developed infrastructure. Build it, make it affordable, better, and accessible, and people will come. Until then, it’s all just a bunch of talk. Demanding sacrifice and shaming people will never work.
I would agree that per capita implies thinking about marginal emissions...and that's where the agreement ends. Thinking about marginal emissions does not imply that deep carbonization is not necessary, and the idea that it leads to silly degrowth and sacrifice arguments is simply absurd. I won't address those arguments because they don't exist - you just asserted it.
That deep decarbonization is necessary does not tell us how that task should be distributed. How fast should each country reduce their emissions, to achieve deep decarbonization within a given carbon budget, at lowest cost (or maximum benefit, if you prefer)? You mention this here "All countries have to get to zero at maximum speed, not just cut the “slack”." but you don't address the issue. Why must everyone go at maximum speed? Economically, this does not make sense. Countries with lower cost marginal emissions cuts available should obviously cut faster, for the world to decarbonize at lowest cost (or maximum benefit, if you prefer).
And morally, it is downright grotesque. Are you actually serious? You think a country like, say, Mozambique - per capita GDP of $547 - should be cutting their emissions at the same rate a country like the US or Canada or Australia should? That's what "everyone at maximum speed" actually means. Is this truly your position?
Reread it and can see no mention, let alone a rebuttal.
Only thing I can think of it is you think the "it's an opportunity, not a cost" part is the justification for everyone going at maximum speed.
Do you truly believe this? That decarbonizing, say, cement, is an opportunity? How? I do agree that there are plenty of opportunities involved, but not all emissions are like that. Some are just straight up "people need to pay the real costs of their pollution, and that will increase prices". And unfortunately, those are lopsided toward the industry poor countries need to develop.
I think the basis of this disagreement lies in these phrases:
"You think a country like, say, Mozambique - per capita GDP of $547 - should be cutting their emissions at the same rate a country like the US or Canada or Australia should? That's what 'everyone at maximum speed' actually means."
There are multiple ways to construe what "everyone at maximum speed" means--it doesn't have to mean "everyone at the same speed"; it can equally well mean, "everyone at the maximum speed feasible."
For countries that do not have capital to invest in energy transition--even though the transition will yield net economic advantages in the short/medium term--the maximum speed feasible is not going to be as high as the speed in developed countries. But the delay is not justified on moral grounds; it's a function of practical limits. Countries that cannot transition quickly pay a local penalty in delayed economic rewards of transition--as transition costs fall and benefits rise, poor countries become even poorer because of delay; the cost in not suffering more because of a pain of transition. The moral imperative for Mozambique et al. would be that because inability to transition quickly due to economic constraints is a penalty, not an excuse, every effort should be made to reduce the penalty as far as possible by prioritizing public/private investment in energy conversion.
The chief obstacle I can imagine is in states where corrupt rent-seeking overpowers public-interest economic planning. Neither moral nor macroeconomic imperatives will have purchase in such cases. I don't see how external coercion can overcome that. Perhaps as green technologies become so cheap and ubiquitously available on the micro level private demand for fossil fuel will eliminate rent-seeking opportunities . . .
I would agree with this if all emissions reduction was in fact an opportunity but that is honestly ridiculous. If it were true, there would be no need to push for emissions reduction policy because everyone would be doing it and no one would be arguing about this.
*Some* of it certainly is simply an opportunity, like part of power (renewables but they don't do everything and the rest is not an opportunity) and EVs, but much of it is more internally expensive, and justified only by the avoided social cost, most of which is in other nations. And that makes justice an utterly unavoidable issue.
Well, sure: "all" is not a useful category. But the point is that "much" is enough to begin, and the curve of non-fossil development is moving towards "more" at an accelerating rate.
If justice is an "utterly unavoidable" issue then we're in trouble, because very few people (and voters) are practically motivated by "justice" beyond token levels of personal cost, and pressing the issue generates reaction that makes the situation worse, as we've amply seen in the US. I think the best path towards maximizing economic justice in this case is minimizing speech about economic justice and maximizing focus on seizing increasingly available economic advantages.
Matthew, I don't know why, but a reply you made isn't showing up on the thread. I think it illustrates the we really have no basic disagreement. This is what I was notified you replied:
----------
--"Well, sure: 'all' is not a useful category. But the point is that 'much' is enough to begin, and the curve of non-fossil development is moving towards "more" at an accelerating rate."
Sure but what there is does not apply equally to all countries. eg new EVs being competitive is great...but not for a poor country that buys cheapo second hand cars, not $50000 average new car prices.
--"If justice is an 'utterly unavoidable' issue then we're in trouble,"
We've been in trouble for decades. It just rankles when people from those countries, who have caused this problem and refuse to address their responsibility, then lecture the rest of us that actually, it's really easy to decarbonize and we can just forget about what they did!
----------
I agree with both points. Saying that low-GDP countries need to cut at maximum speed does not mean they need to cut at speeds beyond what their wealth can accomplish. I read Noah as using "maximum" in this sense.
And, yes, it rankles when people say that what their countries did in the past is irrelevant. If that's used as an excuse to do less, it's illegitimate. If the point is to focus on maximizing future action rather than litigating past injustice, then I think to object that we must litigate because not to rankles will slow necessary progress. It would be good in my view if global justice were a general motivator of positive action, but since it isn't and tends to provoke effective backlash it's an ineffective framing for public policy strategy.
Which part of Sub-Saharan Africa did you imply? SSA's solar intensity varies dramatically. While its Sahel part is basking with solar (although in the moment isn't particularly a low-hanging fruit due to the instability in that region), the rest of West and Central Africa is surprisingly and shockingly solar-poor (that is, lacking intensity high enough to make sense economically). Don't let the narrative "but it's-sunny-all-year-around" fools you because much of its energy is wasted by the humidity and near-perpetual cloud coverage around the equator. It's clear the narrative is made by those who never lived in the tropical equator countries.
It's not that all thing is lost though. I believe technology is still the answer and the obvious course of action is to intensify the solar panel technology itself that it can still harness reasonable amount of energy in the tropics. Some exciting works in the field is also worth noting, for example a team in Stanford recently devised a type of solar panel that can harness energy not only from sun ray but kinetic energy from raindrops. And of course, we have to diversify the renewables sources according to the resources based on the condition on the ground. We need everything, from panels and turbine that works in low-intensity regime, to tidal power and waste biomass and geothermal. And whatever else we can do, because it's technology that creates resources.
The point is that many of those countries have very little or no access to that solar rich regions. Mind you, getting around the jurisdiction is hard and complicated, moreover it's Africa where even bordering countries often don't really trade to each other since there's very little manufacturing going on and most only export raw materials (i.e. Togo and Benin don't need Nigeria's oil, Cameroon doesn't need DRC's cobalt etc.). Those certain countries in question would still be unable to access the electricity generated by Sahel's solar (if it EVER materializes in the first place) and would likely fall behind if there's no change in the renewables perspective in general (that is, the prevailing disdain of the solar/wind-poor countries' needs).
This thing might also be well applies to other solar-poor developing/under-developed countries outside Africa, of which include rapidly-industrializing but still technologically handicapped countries. Neglecting this fact might well undoing the progress elsewhere (even if the PRC stops burning coal and go on full renewables).
I don't think so. Rent-seeking is ubiquitous. I think it's an obstacle in developed countries, but does not generally overpower public interest planning. I think the IRA demonstrates this for the US, although, of course, we could always do much better.
Per capita per unit of GDP, countries like China are the worst carbon emitters. For every dollar of productivity, China produces three times as much carbon as the United States. Poor countries have room to both cut emissions and increase GDP; they are not mutually exclusive—quite the contrary.
This assumes all emissions cost the same to eliminate, which of course they don't. Looking at intensity (emissions/GDP) is only half the ledger. You have to look at what it costs to remove them, too.
And unfortunately, industrial emissions are by wide agreement the most difficult to eliminate, and also essential to development (Noah has done pieces arguing the same IIRC).
Apparently, I missed the section of the article where Noah says we should bomb the countries that fail to decarbonize fast enough and you missed the section where he says we should institute policies to lower the price of renewables until other countries can't afford not to decarbonize (because it saves them so much money).
The U.S. doesn’t have to give transfers—though they already have given a lot of green tech to China, batteries and solar in particular.
China was on their way to having a hugely robust tech sector including social media and games until Xi stepped in and decided he wanted concrete and steel and not a bunch of nerds. China will have to ditch neo-Stalinism and state subsidy of coal and concrete—much of the rest will take care of itself.
I think you raise a good point wrt the poorer low emitting countries which they too will be sure to remind the rich high emitting countries of when it comes to loss and damages, technology transfer, development funding and clean energy financing.
I don't really enjoy being the naysayer, but someone has to do it....
"First, the blunt fact of climate change is that in order to save the world from extremely damaging effects, we can’t just partially decarbonize; we have to completely decarbonize."
This is not a fact, it is a widely repeated claim, unsubstantiated by anything except models based on models. The modeled effects of carbon increase are used to generate scary but unsubstantiated forecasts of large temperature increases. These models are based on large positive feedbacks that assume modest warming from carbon will lead to much further warming from feedback affects (albedo, water vapor as greenhouse gas, methane liberation, or whatever). These feedback effects are entirely speculative. However, these model results are treated as "science", and used as the inputs for further models that attempt to estimate environmental effects of this temperature increase. I haven't studied these second-order models, but I have no confidence in their outputs, because I have no confidence in their inputs.
"Rapid progress in renewable technology has made rapid deep decarbonization feasible instead of a pipe dream. This means that decarbonizing the economy is no longer a matter of making economic sacrifices; instead, it’s an economic opportunity."
I skimmed the Joule paper, and it seems like mindless boosterism, backed up by questionable data. A couple of points: energy costs of renewables are based on, among others, a Lazard study which assumes continuing government subsidies for renewable energy. It shouldn't be necessary to say, but anything can be made to look inexpensive if you don't count the cost of the subsidies. Also, the authors address energy storage by assuming massive use of batteries. They assume that "flow batteries" will be the primary technology, even though this technology has not yet been demonstrated for large-scale operation, let alone given a basis for cost evaluation.
So: the claim that rapid deep decarbonization (or, really, any decarbonization at all) is critical is fundamentally unsubstantiated. Claims that decarbonization can be done while increasing standards of living is little more than wishful thinking.
"What we need for deep rapid global decarbonization is not personal abstemiousness, but government policy. Governments must use a combination of rules and incentives to spur a faster transition to renewables, and they must invest in the infrastructure to spread renewable use quickly."
This sort of thinking makes me sure that we must keep people with Noah's reasoning from getting control of the government.
Well, at least Noah is reasoning. I'm not sure about how much of that takes place in our Government/performance art.
The Joule paper is levered by its assumptions. It defines what a technology is: Fracking is just part of oil, and its advances at the margin are discounted by including it in the whole. Past performance IS considered the sole determinant of future results. No attempt is made to determine where science is actually headed. Attempts to hit home runs (fusion, silicon space balls, etc) are dismissed or ignored.
Yet it is a mistake to think the paper is without value. Anything that gets people to think about how to solve this problem at minimal cost over time rather than immediately is going to improve the discussion. The planet has two problems: warming and development that will require investment and invention to solve. Since invention does not happen with the snap of the fingers, investment timing matters. Stop giving money to Elon Musk and save it for when it can do more good.
"Anything that gets people to think about how to solve this problem at minimal cost over time rather than immediately is going to improve the discussion."
I guess I agree with this, but it's not clear how the Joule paper contributes. It claims, without much justification, that we are already at the point where decarbonization is a net economic benefit, and faster decarbonization is more beneficial than slower decarbonization. Noah Smith uses this to claim that no sacrifice is needed - we just have to allow use of the most economical power, and all will be well. This is a substitute for thinking.
More broadly, I think the problem statement needs some rework. A few years ago, it was "We must stop all carbon emissions by 2030 or the planet will be unliveable." Now, it seems to be "We must stop all carbon emissions by 2080 or it will be really bad, but sooner would be better." These claims are unsupported by science, so they can't really be taken seriously. Even an aspirational goal to eliminate carbon emissions at some point won't get very far until and unless we have a path to get there that is technically and economically viable.
"These feedback effects are entirely speculative. However, these model results are treated as 'science' . . ."
I think this is poorly framed, Mr. Smith. The effects are projections based on current trends and theories of the causes for those trends. That is not "speculation"; that is the way applied science works. Of course the data may prove wrong; the causes may prove to have been different; the projections may prove to be miscalculations. That is always true of science, by definition--if a claim is not in principle falsifiable by showing errors in the factors behind it then it is not science. You seem to be making a demand for absolute certainty, which is inconsistent with science, and also with optimal policy making. (Picking out as a reason to dismiss the Joule paper what may be a single flaw in a single underlying study--Lazard--among the many data sources, when the Joule paper does not specify that data point as one it relied on, doesn't seem to me to strengthen your argument. I also think you have mischaracterized the article's statements about the projected contribution of flow batteries.)
It's valid to say that these leveraged calculations are not grounded enough to persuade you, but that concerns criteria you have chosen. If those criteria are so vague as to rule out all second-order modeling, then they are not likely to be persuasive to others. Over the past three decades, what was viewed as alarmist modeling in the early '90s has tended to be confirmed by subsequent climate data.
The models quoted for climate alarmism all assume positive feedbacks that have never been observed. This is the speculative part. These feedbacks are unlikely to dominate - if positive feedback effects really dominate, we'd see any warming from any source leading to runaway heating. We'd also see any cooling from any source leading to runaway cooling. There have been numerous heating and cooling cycles over recorded history (and also over geologic times), but we haven't seen evidence of runaway feedbacks. Unless you count the Snowball Earth hypothesis, but that's controversial, and also 650 million years ago or more.
These models do not match warming observed from 1940 to 1990, so "adjustments" were made that assumed there were countervailing cooling effects (industrial aerosols was a common one) to make model outputs match observed temperatures. The actual warming observed since 1990 has been much lower than the model outputs used by the IPCC for its projections.
I don't demand absolute certainty. I object to the claims of certainty by our host Mr. Smith and like-minded people. To expand: I don't object to measures to mitigate potential effects of continued warming. I don't object to supporting research and engineering to develop alternative energy sources. I do object to blindly committing to unproven or impractical elimination of fossil fuels in an attempt to prevent unlikely worst-case scenarios.
The Joule authors cite Lazard as a source for their energy cost estimates (footnoted as 84). I mentioned this study because I'm familiar with it - it's been widely quoted (including by Noah Smith) to justify claims that renewables are now cheaper than conventional power. Since they quoted this study, it shows that either they haven't examined it enough to be aware of its weaknesses, or they know the weaknesses and cite the study anyway because they like its conclusions, or perhaps they've done their own analysis and come to the same results. In either case, citing Lazard weakens their case, rather than strengthening it.
As far as batteries, I quote from their "Supplemental Information Document S-1": "We suppose that Li-ion and Va-redox flow batteries fill these roles, though there are other battery chemistries and designs available"
It is certainly true that the calculations presented don't persuade me. They don't persuade many other people who have looked at them.
You say "what was viewed as alarmist modeling in the early '90s has tended to be confirmed by subsequent climate data." Many advocates have claimed this, but they don't publish the forecasts from 1995 and compare to the temperature record since. As I mentioned above, observed temperature rises since 1990 are far below the lower limits published in 1995. If you like, I'll provide links to the data substantiating this.
"As I mentioned above, observed temperature rises since 1990 are far below the lower limits published in 1995. If you like, I'll provide links to the data substantiating this."
I'd be interested in seeing the data you're relying on, Mr. Smith. I just did some deep research (5 minutes via Google, which reflects my level of expertise), because my statement was based on my impressions rather than specific studies I'd retained. Searching for 1995 predictions, I got an article in the NY Times (9/18/95) reporting the UN IPCC prediction of a rise of 1.5-6.0F degrees by 2100 (the Times report didn't specify the baseline). Looking at NOAA's 2021 report (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-202112), the average land/sea surface temperature last year was 1.51F above the 1900-2000 average baseline. The report also notes that since 1980, this figure has been rising at an accelerating rate, averaging 0.32F per decade. It seems to me that this would confirm the IPCC report range, even if one simply used the current 1980-2020 decadal average as a flat rate to calculate a 1995-2100 projected increase from baseline (~3.3F).
I assume you're looking at different reports from the 1990s and/or of current measures.
You may already know some of this; if so, I apologize for boring you.
Part of the problem with looking at this question is that the amount of "rise" has to be over some timeframe, and relative to some starting point. The general approach is to measure "temperature anomaly" which is defined, for a point on the earth, as the difference between currently measured temperature (actually daily high and low temperatures, averaged to give one number) and the baseline, which is usually an average for that point for the years 1900 through 1999. This can be reported by day, (or averaging daily readings) by month, or by year.
So, when the NY Times reported a forecast of 1.5-6F (0.8 to 3.3C), I would assume they meant an increase relative to then-current temperatures. The NOAA report cites an increase of 0.32F/0.18C per decade since 1980. This would imply a net increase of 1.28F/0.72C since 1981. This is curious, because a data set that NOAA publishes (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/global-temperature-anomalies/anomalies) indicates a much smaller increase - from 0.28 in 1981 to 0.84 in 2021, or an increase of 0.56C, but the 1.51 increase relative to the baseline matches. To add further confusion, there are different organizations (NASA and Hadley are two prominent ones) publishing different datasets.
But, I was referring to the published forecasts, and how they've compared to actual history that we can measure, not to current forecasts for the next 80 years.
A column on Carbon Brief (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/) attempts to compare earlier forecasts to history through 2017. For instance, the forecast published in the 1990 IPCC report projected mean warming from 0.18C in 1990 to 0.84C in 2017, or an increase of 0.66C. He claims NOAA shows an actual increase over this period from 0.26C to 0.71C, or an increase of 0.45C - about 32% less warming than this model. The data series I downloaded from NOAA shows an increase from 0.47C in 1995 to 0.9C in 2017, or an increase of 0.43C - about the same increase as he reports, but with different values. I think this is because NOAA at some point re-baselined their data - effectively resetting the zero point, but with similar year to year changes, at least for this time period.
The writer of the column looks at the changes from 1970 to 2017, but this is very odd - the temperature data from 1970 to 1990 was history by the time this forecast was published; it was the input that went into the model. Any model should be able to match history. Comparing the model's output to 20 years of history (where the model was tweaked to match the history) plus 27 years of forecast will make any model look great.
The IPCC used to show older forecasts as well as newer ones in their periodic reports, but they stopped doing this when "actual" temperature rise was consistently falling below the lower limits of previous forecasts. This again makes it hard to compare previous forecasts to either actual results or newer forecasts.
So, I'm not really interested in the current forecast for the year 2100. I want to know what that model, published in 1995 (or 2000, or whatever year it was published) said would happen by 2021, because we can check that model against what actually happened in 2021. The answer, for the models I've checked, is a lot less warming than was predicted.
This isn't a topic I've done actual research on, Mr. Smith, and I appreciate the links. I get embroiled in a back and forth like this perhaps once a year, so I'm neither bored nor expecting to keep up. But let me note a couple of points, responding to yours.
You cite that NOAA's decadal rate increase from 1981/2021 should be ~0.72C, but is actually ~0.56C. Looking at the dataset you link to, this seems to me clearly an artifact of noise: if you had measured 1982/2020 the increment would have been ~0.79C. (2021 was a La Niña year.) The annual dataset does not smooth the curve, and that will account for the disparity; NOAA is surely reading the trendline rather than comparing the termini.
The Carbon Brief article is very informative, but it does not show consistent over-estimation of warming in the models of the late 20th c., as you suggest. It shows a balance between under- and over-estimation. It concludes: "Climate models published since 1973 have generally been quite skillful in projecting future warming. While some were too low and some too high, they all show outcomes reasonably close to what has actually occurred . . ."
If we look at the two IPCC reports from the 1990s, the 1990 IPCC estimate of warming was 17% too high (compared to 2017 observations), while the 1995 estimate was 28% too low.
Focusing on the 1995 estimate, which is the one I was discussing in my last comment, the NOAA anomaly for 1995-2017 rose ~0.43C as you say, which is consistent with the estimate of the recent warming rate as averaging 0.18C (0.32F)/decade. Thus the interval of 1995-2017 shows the warming rate one would expect from NOAA retrospective figures, which is more warming, not less, than the IPCC predicted. You say you want to know what the 1995-IPCC predicted anomaly for 2021 would be, and I calculate that as ~0.60C. The NOAA data figure (1995/2021) shows much less warming: 0.37C--but, again, 1995 was an El Niño year and 2021 featured La Niña. If the years were 1996/2020 the figure would be 0.66C, somewhat more warming than the NOAA trend. Only the trendline matters, and the trendline seems very close to the 1995 report.
Let me explain why I'm not interested in any of the forecast data from before the forecast was published. The forecasts are based on models, which are based on historical data. The models include a great deal of theoretical detail on things like heat budget, greenhouse effect, interactions between sea, land and air, thermal inertia, and many other things I don't pretend to know. They use historical data to estimate past temperatures, and then estimates for future values of this data to forecast the future. The model output is then compared to observed historical data, and the parameters are adjusted (they say "tuned)") to get the past model output to match the past observed data.
When business analysts do this, they call the adjustments a "plug" variable. It is used to account for all the errors in the model. The problem is, you can't really assume that the "plug" will stay consistent when you look to the future, because it's just a "plug" to make the past data match.
So, when Mr. Hausfather of Carbon Brief looks at "forecast" outputs from 1970 to 2017, he's comparing the model output to a mix of data that was already history when the forecast was published, plus unknown future data. I'm not impressed by matching the historical part of the data, because the model was "tuned" to match the historical part of the data. For the extreme example, his most recent forecast (5th IPCC Report) was published in 2013. 43 of the 47 years he looked at were already history before the forecast was published, and the model was tuned to match the model output to the history. The model was built to match the model output to this history. Only 4 years' output was really forecast.
I could build a "model" based on any data series with a trend, and get it to match the historical data pretty closely. I could use US population, retail price of navel oranges, average square footage of new houses, or the S&P 500 stock index - any data series that I can get for the appropriate years. All of these things were increasing, and so was the global temperature anomaly. If I use two or three variables, I can get a tighter fit. Now, presenting this as a scientific model would be scientific fraud. I don't claim that the modelers are doing anything like this. But, their forecasts are only worth something if they can do better than such a simplistic model. And "doing better" doesn't mean explaining the past, unless they were forced to build the model with no historical data, but that's not how they work.
So, when looking at the climate models, performance since 1973 is irrelevant, except for the forecast published in 1973. Let's go back to the 1990 IPCC report. To reduce "noise" in the actual data, I'll use a 3-year average, where 1970 is the average of 1968, 1969, and 1970 readings. According to Mr. Hausfather, the IPCC model increased from -.016 in 1970 to 0.180 in 1990, and .926 in 2020, for an increase of .746 from 1990 to 2020. The NOAA series increases from .01 in 1970 to .36 in 1990 and .91 in 2020, for an increase of .55 from 1990 to 2020 - again less than the forecast, but by 26%, not 32% (due to the smoothing).
I'll apply the same approach to the 1995 forecast. In this case, Mr. Hausfather claims the "forecast" starts in 1993 - I'll take his word that the model wasn't updated between 1993 and 1995. This model forecast an increase from .223 in 1993 to .853 in 2020, for an increase of .63. The (rolling average) NOAA series increases from .363 in 1992 to .81 in 2020, for an increase of .547 - 14% less than the forecast..
Now, Mr. Hausfather calculates different differences. He claims to be using a NASA series for the "actual" data, and provides a link. I followed the link, but couldn't find any data - it may not be there any more - his column is 5 years old now. Also, he starts his comparison period in 1970, not the time the forecast was published.
But the key point is that the only meaningful measure compares the "forecast" part of the model output to the actual data that showed up after the forecast was made.
Agreed, though there is still significant value in curbing the marginally easiest emissions first, especially because clean tech is always progressing and so the most difficult emissions to get rid of will be much easier to replace years from now.
For example, it makes a lot of sense to shut down coal plants in Poland right now and leave thorough decarbonisation of heavy industry for when we have better green hydrogen technology.
I don't think I quite agree with this. I get your points that, ultimately we all have to go to zero and that personal choices to use less carbon isn't the way we are going to get there. At the same time, I think that per capita carbon use is a reasonable measure to look at, as it can help determine how well government policy is working to eliminate carbon consumption.
After all, if I told you that Monaco's carbon production was half that of the US, your take away wouldn't be that Monaco was doing better than the US. That metric would either tell us that US was doing great or Monaco had made some really, really bad decisions. The same is true with aggregate comparisons between the US and China, just to a lesser extent. All else being equal, if China is producing the same amount of carbon as the US despite having the 4-5x the population, that is a sign that China is doing better in limiting its overall carbon footprint.
The problem is that all else is not equal.
First, derivatives matter. China's carbon trajectory is going up while the US's carbon trajectory is going down. This suggests that the US is taking this fight more seriously and, unless China changes its priorities, we aren't stopping climate change.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the reason why China has a lower per capita carbon production isn't because it is intentionally more environmentally friendly than the US, it is because it is poorer than the US. If we wanted to hit China's per capita carbon emissions, we could probably do so nearly overnight by crashing the economy or increasing taxes (and then burning the revenues) to the point where the median US income was in line with China ($3,500 per year). The problem is that that would be an awful strategy. Our goal (which you point out is an achievable goal) should be to hit net zero, while increasing (or at least maintaining) current standards of living.
Ultimately, I would say that neither aggregate nor per per capital carbon emissions are the right metric. Rather the right metric is carbon emissions per unit of GDP and, on that metric, we are blowing China out of the water.
"China's carbon trajectory is going up while the US's carbon trajectory is going down. This suggests that the US is taking this fight more seriously"
Actually, it suggests that the economics of natural gas for electricity generation beat the economics of coal. Once federal policy allowed natural gas beginning in 1988, gas was the fuel of choice, gradually replacing coal. This has nothing to do with any fight against climate change.
As part of the general idea that the government could manage the economy, natural gas prices for interstate sales were set by federal regulation starting in the 1950s. Prices were not allowed to rise, so customers paid the same price for gas in 1974 they had paid in 1959. Demand had increased, but supply had not increased as much, so shortages developed. Because intrastate prices were not regulated but interstate prices were, producers could sell their gas within their own state for higher prices, and did not ship gas to other states. People in Chicago and New York (and others) who used gas for heat could not get gas at all. Rather than allow gas prices to rise (which would have been politically unpopular), the government tried to ensure supply by restricting industrial uses of gas - including banning gas for power generation. They (slowly) started deregulating prices in 1978, eventually ending price regulation and use restrictions in 1987. Supply increased. Power generators weren't building much new capacity at the time, but when they started serious building in the mid to late 1990s, gas was the fuel of choice.
Thank you for the explanation! Looks like the 14775th case of "Try to reduce prices by price controls, create perverse incentives in the process, make production unprofitable, be surprised about supply shortages, accept that the policy is bad and liberalize market OR be Venezuela.
Let me be more explicit: switching from coal to natural gas for electricity generation was driven entirely by economics, with decisions made in the 1988-2001 period. At this time, no one in government or industry was even pretending to make such decisions based on climate change.
Natural gas would have been the choice earlier, except there was an actual law enacted in 1974 that prohibited using natural gas for electric power. This was done because natural gas supplies were low, and constrained supplies had caused price spikes and outages to residential customers who used it for heating and cooking. This was a political effort to protect consumers. And a good example of why such decisions should be left out of politics as much as possible.
I think you are over thinking this. We need to stop emitting carbon, or at least admit as little as possible. That means everyone should be aiming at using carbon in the most efficient way possible. And as they say, the people who are going to be most effected by climate change are those that are already the worst off, so the mere fact that developed countries are making an effort at this is already redistribution.
I'll also add that, while I think Climate Change is a high priority, it isn't the only priority. I think the best measure for how a country is doing in fighting climate change is carbon/GDP. If you want to point out a particular policy is going to reduce carbon/GDP at the expense of causing a bunch of people to starve, we should consider that, but, at that point, we aren't just looking at climate change, we are considering other priorities.
Agreed with almost everything here except I honestly don’t think oil and coal companies are useful targets to demonize at this point either. Energy is life and people have next to no tolerance for higher energy prices. Put the focus squarely on clean energy abundance and we will eventually stop using dirty fuels despite how compelling they are in terms of energy density, portability and immediate safety.
Renewable alternatives are very important but you don't get to net zero without sacrifice and international cooperation. Today's high oil prices are only due to oil producers management of supply and demand to maximize their profit, the cheapest oil on the planet is still very cheap to produce and there's a lot of it. You will never be able to innovate around all the ways oil is used today without some global carbon price. And to get buy-in from China, India and other poorer countries there needs to be some fairness in per-capita terms.
Are you sure we need to get to zero per capita? Is that even possible? I thought we needed to get to two or three. Per capita is relevant still.
And I don't think there's an equivalence in moralistic thinking between austerity and this. People who worry about climate are right, they're not choosing this position because they think we're living too well. Not mostly anyway. When you start out from a position of high emissions, yes you are more to 'blame'. But the easier it is to cut too. Much like it's easier to improve if you barely pass a test, just study harder. But if you got 95%, it's really tough to get to 100%.
True but big fat SUVs and cities built for highways are still gonna emit a lot even if it's all electric (15-30% of lifecycle emissions is from manufacturing). So some ways of life are less compatible with net zero. I agree that changing them would not be a loss (health gains from walkable cities, etc.), and in fact can accelerate GDP growth (capital invested in faster growing industries than incumbent), but will be painful for some, without doubt. And more so if there is a national identity built around the automobile.
"True but big fat SUVs and cities built for highways are still gonna emit a lot even if it's all electric (15-30% of lifecycle emissions is from manufacturing)."
Not if you decarbonize manufacturing too. And manufacturing does, indeed, also have to be decarbonized.
Interesting article, but I think there are a few conceptual problems.
"Global net zero means that all countries’ total emissions have to come down to net zero. It also means that all countries’ per capita emissions have to come down to net zero." This statement is untrue because negative emissions are possible (either via carbon removal technology or afforestation). In practice, this will more likely involve developed nations continuing to emit carbon while developing nations plant trees than the reverse, so your statement will probably be less wrong in a cost-optimised world than the view you are arguing against.
However even if every country is required to get to net zero separately, the rate at which they should do so may be very different; if you assign everyone a carbon budget and require them to get to net zero before spending it all, the rate of decarbonisation should be highest in those with the highest per-capita emissions. So per-capita emissions gives the urgency of a particular area or region getting to net zero for an equitable transition. There is no "maximum speed" short of immediately stopping all fossil fuel burning immediately, so we are always in a world of tradeoffs. To the extent that renewable energy is cheapest, it's clear that everyone should adopt it immediately, irrespective of their carbon targets. But it's not clear that we need to do anything about these situations, since believing this basically implies that the problem will fix itself. In practice just because renewable energy is profitable on the margin under some financial assumptions doesn't guarantee it is for those with higher interest rates, low project security and government corruption in particular, which unfortunately is the case in many regions with low per-capita emissions. So per capita emissions are still useful input for deciding where to inject investment and infrastructural support for these nominally free opportunities to be realised.
Do you think that framing it in terms of ‘per capita emissions’ also ignores the role of technology in reducing emissions (I.e. this is a ‘person issue’ rather than something a bit more abstract)?
Amen.
Good news on this front, the world reached peak per capital emissions about a decade ago
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/
I very much like the professors statement about fighting climate change leading to an abundance of cheap energy, that is how it should have been sold from day one and while I agree with some of what the post says I still think talking in terms of per-capita emissions has a role
I think this maybe comes from me living in Australia, where outside the Republicans our Conservative Coalition Partys (confusingly for Americans the senior partner is called The Liberal Party) are the most climate-skeptic party of Govt in the developed world and for 20 years now any time there is talk of making the changes needed to fight climate change in this country (like during our Carbon Tax debates and the ensuing decade long climate-wars, where climate stood in for social conservatism in our version of your culture wars) the constant riposte from the Coalition Opposition, then Govt (which reversed the Carbon Price) was "but China"
That was seriously there main argument and it really worked with the Australian ppl, especially suburban ring voters who decide our elections, they would be asked 'why should we close down coal mines, costing jobs, then pay higher power bills (this was before the big reduction in solar and wind prices) when China will increase their carbon emissions by more every year, building more coal fired power plants than we have as a country each and every year for the next decade" it was a really tough argument to fight back against, so the 'Per Capita" framing was the only thing climate action activists had left that had any purchase with those voters (the educated inner-urban electorates were already on-board, but they were, until this year when they finally developed some self-respect, died in the wool Liberal voters for economic reasons, despite the fact the Lib/Nat Coalition used them as rhetorical punching bag for decades 'inner city latte sippers' 'middle class snobs who don't respect good wholesome true Aussies working in the mines or the steel industry' that sort of stuff you are all so aware of
So while I see some good points int his post, I still think 'per-capita' as a role to play in the campaigning arm at least
Wind/solar etc. was sold as not only a better but also a cheaper alternative in the 70ies - when oil prices were high. When oil became (considerably) cheaper that advantage went away and with it to enthusiasm for green energy on a larger scale.
Some projects continued like the inter-cables bringing excess (greener) energy from Scandinavia to Europe etc.
Good article, but completely obvious to anyone that played Civ V.
I agree, especially when we get to the point of hectoring and chiding individuals. However, in a democracy changing government policy requires changing enough individual voters’ attitudes, even though governments may run ahead or behind their populace. Arguably, the US being such a high per capita emitter is an indication that there is more political work needed to change attitudes of Americans than say European democracies, but that might be a spurious argument. And even then the best way to change those attitudes is not to focus too much on personal consumption/emission habits.
Europeans have smaller homes in walkable cities and use public transit more. I don't think they did this to be environmentally friendly, they just prefer that lifestyle.
A lot of Americans do too, if you judge by home prices in walkable / transit-oriented areas compared to non-walkable areas. A small component of decarbonizing might be to allow more housing to be built in walkable American cities, so that people who WANT to live a low-carbon lifestyle can do it. This is more of an opportunity, not a sacrifice (except for the nimbys). But since we will have to decarbonize our car centric suburbs anyway, we can get to net zero without this, probably.
I think allowing more housing in walkable cities could be a huge part of getting to net-zero, especially if those housing policy changes are paired with a few other policies.
For example, here in Washington State, our building code council has (basically) said new commercial buildings need to be all-electric, and it looks like they'll soon do the same for residential buildings. Once those rules go into effect, every time a real estate parcel is redeveloped the economics of owning and running a gas grid get worse for the gas utility. So, housing policy that speeds up redevelopment in favor of transit-oriented development doesn't just reduce transportation emissions; it also speeds up the demise of the gas utility business model. Ordinary homeowners taking on electrification projects with Inflation Reduction Act money should have a similar effect.
What's more, if our state legislators also reform gas utilities' "obligation to serve" to legalize acceptable escape routes for these companies (e.g., pruning branches, converting to thermal utilities), then the gas utilities might have an incentive to reduce emissions in existing buildings faster than a mandate could get the job done, simply to avoid stranded assets so their business can survive.
I live now in semi-rural IL where a lot of development was recently done/is being done. I see with horror what is built: shops where low-rise apartment building should have been, parking lots where shops and a small park could have been (with a parking garage). Three-lane roads, already congested a lot of the time - why no light rail ? If you do not have a car no way you can shop here for food, visit doctor/dentist - nothing walkable or suitable for bicycles (except for a nature path).
Why no light rail? It sounds like your community will have a hard time even paying for a basic fixed-route bus service.
To learn about the basic details of what makes transit service effective, consultant Jarrett Walker at humantransit.org has broken it down into easy-to-explain principles of what makes service useful.
One concept Walker developed was the "transit triangle." Too many advocates and opponents of transit get tripped up on the density-ridership relationship, thinking that some level of density is necessary to produce ridership and no city has it or will allow it to the level to succeed.
The three points of the triangle are development (density as well as a walkable urban form), ridership and service. The big problem is that many communities are unwilling to spend money on the operating costs to make transit service useful. Frequency and span of service determine whether someone will ride transit more than density. (There are some comparisons of U.S. and Canadian cities of alike populations and densities; Canadian cities will almost always perform better. These comparisons aren't of the megacities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver; these are of small and midsize cities that run buses only).
This is Walker's essay about the triangle: https://humantransit.org/2011/01/basics-conceptual-triangles.html
With no plan for rail or other form of public transportation the places I live & shop, are not built "dense" enough to be walkable. This country needs more houses, but will run out of space to build them if the wasteful way of developing land continues.
I lived in the CA Central Valley, two cities were intertwined - one big, one small. Both had public transportation, but the systems got each financed in a different way. The result: they had to keep separate schedules, could not have continuous services all through ten area.
Interestingly, Americans usually tell me why things cannot be done.
There's no magic "density" number to determine walkability.
The problem comes from two places: parking-first design and zoning. These do more than anything to hamper density and make walking a hard slog.
Parking often takes away productive land from residences or business activities, and land uses are scrutinized over how much car traffic something will produce. Parking is seen as the solution. Also, parking must be provided for the peak of usage. For a shopping center, that is usually the Friday after Thanksgiving. Most other times, the lots don't come anywhere close to full.
Zoning has been around much longer, and we have no lived memory of why zoning has been imposed and we always thought cities were settled this way.
There's more information about this, and how to change it, on StrongTowns.org .
Well, there's spoken policy, and then there's revealed policy. To listen to Texas politicians, it's fossil fuels forever. But Texas has very high installs of wind power and solar power, and is rapidly decarbonising.
Texans are going to wake up one year soon to find their emissions have declined to nil. They won't care, but they'll like the low power and transport costs.
Everyone gets it. The problem is that the solutions are not viable yet. Normal people can’t afford a Tesla or to convert their home to solar. Natural gas is plentiful and has a fully developed infrastructure. Build it, make it affordable, better, and accessible, and people will come. Until then, it’s all just a bunch of talk. Demanding sacrifice and shaming people will never work.
I would agree that per capita implies thinking about marginal emissions...and that's where the agreement ends. Thinking about marginal emissions does not imply that deep carbonization is not necessary, and the idea that it leads to silly degrowth and sacrifice arguments is simply absurd. I won't address those arguments because they don't exist - you just asserted it.
That deep decarbonization is necessary does not tell us how that task should be distributed. How fast should each country reduce their emissions, to achieve deep decarbonization within a given carbon budget, at lowest cost (or maximum benefit, if you prefer)? You mention this here "All countries have to get to zero at maximum speed, not just cut the “slack”." but you don't address the issue. Why must everyone go at maximum speed? Economically, this does not make sense. Countries with lower cost marginal emissions cuts available should obviously cut faster, for the world to decarbonize at lowest cost (or maximum benefit, if you prefer).
And morally, it is downright grotesque. Are you actually serious? You think a country like, say, Mozambique - per capita GDP of $547 - should be cutting their emissions at the same rate a country like the US or Canada or Australia should? That's what "everyone at maximum speed" actually means. Is this truly your position?
None of this makes any sense. All of these points have already been rebutted in the post.
Reread it and can see no mention, let alone a rebuttal.
Only thing I can think of it is you think the "it's an opportunity, not a cost" part is the justification for everyone going at maximum speed.
Do you truly believe this? That decarbonizing, say, cement, is an opportunity? How? I do agree that there are plenty of opportunities involved, but not all emissions are like that. Some are just straight up "people need to pay the real costs of their pollution, and that will increase prices". And unfortunately, those are lopsided toward the industry poor countries need to develop.
I think the basis of this disagreement lies in these phrases:
"You think a country like, say, Mozambique - per capita GDP of $547 - should be cutting their emissions at the same rate a country like the US or Canada or Australia should? That's what 'everyone at maximum speed' actually means."
There are multiple ways to construe what "everyone at maximum speed" means--it doesn't have to mean "everyone at the same speed"; it can equally well mean, "everyone at the maximum speed feasible."
For countries that do not have capital to invest in energy transition--even though the transition will yield net economic advantages in the short/medium term--the maximum speed feasible is not going to be as high as the speed in developed countries. But the delay is not justified on moral grounds; it's a function of practical limits. Countries that cannot transition quickly pay a local penalty in delayed economic rewards of transition--as transition costs fall and benefits rise, poor countries become even poorer because of delay; the cost in not suffering more because of a pain of transition. The moral imperative for Mozambique et al. would be that because inability to transition quickly due to economic constraints is a penalty, not an excuse, every effort should be made to reduce the penalty as far as possible by prioritizing public/private investment in energy conversion.
The chief obstacle I can imagine is in states where corrupt rent-seeking overpowers public-interest economic planning. Neither moral nor macroeconomic imperatives will have purchase in such cases. I don't see how external coercion can overcome that. Perhaps as green technologies become so cheap and ubiquitously available on the micro level private demand for fossil fuel will eliminate rent-seeking opportunities . . .
I would agree with this if all emissions reduction was in fact an opportunity but that is honestly ridiculous. If it were true, there would be no need to push for emissions reduction policy because everyone would be doing it and no one would be arguing about this.
*Some* of it certainly is simply an opportunity, like part of power (renewables but they don't do everything and the rest is not an opportunity) and EVs, but much of it is more internally expensive, and justified only by the avoided social cost, most of which is in other nations. And that makes justice an utterly unavoidable issue.
Well, sure: "all" is not a useful category. But the point is that "much" is enough to begin, and the curve of non-fossil development is moving towards "more" at an accelerating rate.
If justice is an "utterly unavoidable" issue then we're in trouble, because very few people (and voters) are practically motivated by "justice" beyond token levels of personal cost, and pressing the issue generates reaction that makes the situation worse, as we've amply seen in the US. I think the best path towards maximizing economic justice in this case is minimizing speech about economic justice and maximizing focus on seizing increasingly available economic advantages.
Matthew, I don't know why, but a reply you made isn't showing up on the thread. I think it illustrates the we really have no basic disagreement. This is what I was notified you replied:
----------
--"Well, sure: 'all' is not a useful category. But the point is that 'much' is enough to begin, and the curve of non-fossil development is moving towards "more" at an accelerating rate."
Sure but what there is does not apply equally to all countries. eg new EVs being competitive is great...but not for a poor country that buys cheapo second hand cars, not $50000 average new car prices.
--"If justice is an 'utterly unavoidable' issue then we're in trouble,"
We've been in trouble for decades. It just rankles when people from those countries, who have caused this problem and refuse to address their responsibility, then lecture the rest of us that actually, it's really easy to decarbonize and we can just forget about what they did!
----------
I agree with both points. Saying that low-GDP countries need to cut at maximum speed does not mean they need to cut at speeds beyond what their wealth can accomplish. I read Noah as using "maximum" in this sense.
And, yes, it rankles when people say that what their countries did in the past is irrelevant. If that's used as an excuse to do less, it's illegitimate. If the point is to focus on maximizing future action rather than litigating past injustice, then I think to object that we must litigate because not to rankles will slow necessary progress. It would be good in my view if global justice were a general motivator of positive action, but since it isn't and tends to provoke effective backlash it's an ineffective framing for public policy strategy.
Which part of Sub-Saharan Africa did you imply? SSA's solar intensity varies dramatically. While its Sahel part is basking with solar (although in the moment isn't particularly a low-hanging fruit due to the instability in that region), the rest of West and Central Africa is surprisingly and shockingly solar-poor (that is, lacking intensity high enough to make sense economically). Don't let the narrative "but it's-sunny-all-year-around" fools you because much of its energy is wasted by the humidity and near-perpetual cloud coverage around the equator. It's clear the narrative is made by those who never lived in the tropical equator countries.
It's not that all thing is lost though. I believe technology is still the answer and the obvious course of action is to intensify the solar panel technology itself that it can still harness reasonable amount of energy in the tropics. Some exciting works in the field is also worth noting, for example a team in Stanford recently devised a type of solar panel that can harness energy not only from sun ray but kinetic energy from raindrops. And of course, we have to diversify the renewables sources according to the resources based on the condition on the ground. We need everything, from panels and turbine that works in low-intensity regime, to tidal power and waste biomass and geothermal. And whatever else we can do, because it's technology that creates resources.
The point is that many of those countries have very little or no access to that solar rich regions. Mind you, getting around the jurisdiction is hard and complicated, moreover it's Africa where even bordering countries often don't really trade to each other since there's very little manufacturing going on and most only export raw materials (i.e. Togo and Benin don't need Nigeria's oil, Cameroon doesn't need DRC's cobalt etc.). Those certain countries in question would still be unable to access the electricity generated by Sahel's solar (if it EVER materializes in the first place) and would likely fall behind if there's no change in the renewables perspective in general (that is, the prevailing disdain of the solar/wind-poor countries' needs).
This thing might also be well applies to other solar-poor developing/under-developed countries outside Africa, of which include rapidly-industrializing but still technologically handicapped countries. Neglecting this fact might well undoing the progress elsewhere (even if the PRC stops burning coal and go on full renewables).
"The chief obstacle I can imagine is in states where corrupt rent-seeking overpowers public-interest economic planning."
That sounds like a description of Green Energy in the US.
I don't think so. Rent-seeking is ubiquitous. I think it's an obstacle in developed countries, but does not generally overpower public interest planning. I think the IRA demonstrates this for the US, although, of course, we could always do much better.
Per capita per unit of GDP, countries like China are the worst carbon emitters. For every dollar of productivity, China produces three times as much carbon as the United States. Poor countries have room to both cut emissions and increase GDP; they are not mutually exclusive—quite the contrary.
This assumes all emissions cost the same to eliminate, which of course they don't. Looking at intensity (emissions/GDP) is only half the ledger. You have to look at what it costs to remove them, too.
And unfortunately, industrial emissions are by wide agreement the most difficult to eliminate, and also essential to development (Noah has done pieces arguing the same IIRC).
Apparently, I missed the section of the article where Noah says we should bomb the countries that fail to decarbonize fast enough and you missed the section where he says we should institute policies to lower the price of renewables until other countries can't afford not to decarbonize (because it saves them so much money).
The U.S. doesn’t have to give transfers—though they already have given a lot of green tech to China, batteries and solar in particular.
China was on their way to having a hugely robust tech sector including social media and games until Xi stepped in and decided he wanted concrete and steel and not a bunch of nerds. China will have to ditch neo-Stalinism and state subsidy of coal and concrete—much of the rest will take care of itself.
I think you raise a good point wrt the poorer low emitting countries which they too will be sure to remind the rich high emitting countries of when it comes to loss and damages, technology transfer, development funding and clean energy financing.
I don't really enjoy being the naysayer, but someone has to do it....
"First, the blunt fact of climate change is that in order to save the world from extremely damaging effects, we can’t just partially decarbonize; we have to completely decarbonize."
This is not a fact, it is a widely repeated claim, unsubstantiated by anything except models based on models. The modeled effects of carbon increase are used to generate scary but unsubstantiated forecasts of large temperature increases. These models are based on large positive feedbacks that assume modest warming from carbon will lead to much further warming from feedback affects (albedo, water vapor as greenhouse gas, methane liberation, or whatever). These feedback effects are entirely speculative. However, these model results are treated as "science", and used as the inputs for further models that attempt to estimate environmental effects of this temperature increase. I haven't studied these second-order models, but I have no confidence in their outputs, because I have no confidence in their inputs.
"Rapid progress in renewable technology has made rapid deep decarbonization feasible instead of a pipe dream. This means that decarbonizing the economy is no longer a matter of making economic sacrifices; instead, it’s an economic opportunity."
I skimmed the Joule paper, and it seems like mindless boosterism, backed up by questionable data. A couple of points: energy costs of renewables are based on, among others, a Lazard study which assumes continuing government subsidies for renewable energy. It shouldn't be necessary to say, but anything can be made to look inexpensive if you don't count the cost of the subsidies. Also, the authors address energy storage by assuming massive use of batteries. They assume that "flow batteries" will be the primary technology, even though this technology has not yet been demonstrated for large-scale operation, let alone given a basis for cost evaluation.
So: the claim that rapid deep decarbonization (or, really, any decarbonization at all) is critical is fundamentally unsubstantiated. Claims that decarbonization can be done while increasing standards of living is little more than wishful thinking.
"What we need for deep rapid global decarbonization is not personal abstemiousness, but government policy. Governments must use a combination of rules and incentives to spur a faster transition to renewables, and they must invest in the infrastructure to spread renewable use quickly."
This sort of thinking makes me sure that we must keep people with Noah's reasoning from getting control of the government.
Well, at least Noah is reasoning. I'm not sure about how much of that takes place in our Government/performance art.
The Joule paper is levered by its assumptions. It defines what a technology is: Fracking is just part of oil, and its advances at the margin are discounted by including it in the whole. Past performance IS considered the sole determinant of future results. No attempt is made to determine where science is actually headed. Attempts to hit home runs (fusion, silicon space balls, etc) are dismissed or ignored.
Yet it is a mistake to think the paper is without value. Anything that gets people to think about how to solve this problem at minimal cost over time rather than immediately is going to improve the discussion. The planet has two problems: warming and development that will require investment and invention to solve. Since invention does not happen with the snap of the fingers, investment timing matters. Stop giving money to Elon Musk and save it for when it can do more good.
"Anything that gets people to think about how to solve this problem at minimal cost over time rather than immediately is going to improve the discussion."
I guess I agree with this, but it's not clear how the Joule paper contributes. It claims, without much justification, that we are already at the point where decarbonization is a net economic benefit, and faster decarbonization is more beneficial than slower decarbonization. Noah Smith uses this to claim that no sacrifice is needed - we just have to allow use of the most economical power, and all will be well. This is a substitute for thinking.
More broadly, I think the problem statement needs some rework. A few years ago, it was "We must stop all carbon emissions by 2030 or the planet will be unliveable." Now, it seems to be "We must stop all carbon emissions by 2080 or it will be really bad, but sooner would be better." These claims are unsupported by science, so they can't really be taken seriously. Even an aspirational goal to eliminate carbon emissions at some point won't get very far until and unless we have a path to get there that is technically and economically viable.
"These feedback effects are entirely speculative. However, these model results are treated as 'science' . . ."
I think this is poorly framed, Mr. Smith. The effects are projections based on current trends and theories of the causes for those trends. That is not "speculation"; that is the way applied science works. Of course the data may prove wrong; the causes may prove to have been different; the projections may prove to be miscalculations. That is always true of science, by definition--if a claim is not in principle falsifiable by showing errors in the factors behind it then it is not science. You seem to be making a demand for absolute certainty, which is inconsistent with science, and also with optimal policy making. (Picking out as a reason to dismiss the Joule paper what may be a single flaw in a single underlying study--Lazard--among the many data sources, when the Joule paper does not specify that data point as one it relied on, doesn't seem to me to strengthen your argument. I also think you have mischaracterized the article's statements about the projected contribution of flow batteries.)
It's valid to say that these leveraged calculations are not grounded enough to persuade you, but that concerns criteria you have chosen. If those criteria are so vague as to rule out all second-order modeling, then they are not likely to be persuasive to others. Over the past three decades, what was viewed as alarmist modeling in the early '90s has tended to be confirmed by subsequent climate data.
The models quoted for climate alarmism all assume positive feedbacks that have never been observed. This is the speculative part. These feedbacks are unlikely to dominate - if positive feedback effects really dominate, we'd see any warming from any source leading to runaway heating. We'd also see any cooling from any source leading to runaway cooling. There have been numerous heating and cooling cycles over recorded history (and also over geologic times), but we haven't seen evidence of runaway feedbacks. Unless you count the Snowball Earth hypothesis, but that's controversial, and also 650 million years ago or more.
These models do not match warming observed from 1940 to 1990, so "adjustments" were made that assumed there were countervailing cooling effects (industrial aerosols was a common one) to make model outputs match observed temperatures. The actual warming observed since 1990 has been much lower than the model outputs used by the IPCC for its projections.
I don't demand absolute certainty. I object to the claims of certainty by our host Mr. Smith and like-minded people. To expand: I don't object to measures to mitigate potential effects of continued warming. I don't object to supporting research and engineering to develop alternative energy sources. I do object to blindly committing to unproven or impractical elimination of fossil fuels in an attempt to prevent unlikely worst-case scenarios.
The Joule authors cite Lazard as a source for their energy cost estimates (footnoted as 84). I mentioned this study because I'm familiar with it - it's been widely quoted (including by Noah Smith) to justify claims that renewables are now cheaper than conventional power. Since they quoted this study, it shows that either they haven't examined it enough to be aware of its weaknesses, or they know the weaknesses and cite the study anyway because they like its conclusions, or perhaps they've done their own analysis and come to the same results. In either case, citing Lazard weakens their case, rather than strengthening it.
As far as batteries, I quote from their "Supplemental Information Document S-1": "We suppose that Li-ion and Va-redox flow batteries fill these roles, though there are other battery chemistries and designs available"
It is certainly true that the calculations presented don't persuade me. They don't persuade many other people who have looked at them.
You say "what was viewed as alarmist modeling in the early '90s has tended to be confirmed by subsequent climate data." Many advocates have claimed this, but they don't publish the forecasts from 1995 and compare to the temperature record since. As I mentioned above, observed temperature rises since 1990 are far below the lower limits published in 1995. If you like, I'll provide links to the data substantiating this.
"As I mentioned above, observed temperature rises since 1990 are far below the lower limits published in 1995. If you like, I'll provide links to the data substantiating this."
I'd be interested in seeing the data you're relying on, Mr. Smith. I just did some deep research (5 minutes via Google, which reflects my level of expertise), because my statement was based on my impressions rather than specific studies I'd retained. Searching for 1995 predictions, I got an article in the NY Times (9/18/95) reporting the UN IPCC prediction of a rise of 1.5-6.0F degrees by 2100 (the Times report didn't specify the baseline). Looking at NOAA's 2021 report (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-202112), the average land/sea surface temperature last year was 1.51F above the 1900-2000 average baseline. The report also notes that since 1980, this figure has been rising at an accelerating rate, averaging 0.32F per decade. It seems to me that this would confirm the IPCC report range, even if one simply used the current 1980-2020 decadal average as a flat rate to calculate a 1995-2100 projected increase from baseline (~3.3F).
I assume you're looking at different reports from the 1990s and/or of current measures.
You may already know some of this; if so, I apologize for boring you.
Part of the problem with looking at this question is that the amount of "rise" has to be over some timeframe, and relative to some starting point. The general approach is to measure "temperature anomaly" which is defined, for a point on the earth, as the difference between currently measured temperature (actually daily high and low temperatures, averaged to give one number) and the baseline, which is usually an average for that point for the years 1900 through 1999. This can be reported by day, (or averaging daily readings) by month, or by year.
So, when the NY Times reported a forecast of 1.5-6F (0.8 to 3.3C), I would assume they meant an increase relative to then-current temperatures. The NOAA report cites an increase of 0.32F/0.18C per decade since 1980. This would imply a net increase of 1.28F/0.72C since 1981. This is curious, because a data set that NOAA publishes (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/global-temperature-anomalies/anomalies) indicates a much smaller increase - from 0.28 in 1981 to 0.84 in 2021, or an increase of 0.56C, but the 1.51 increase relative to the baseline matches. To add further confusion, there are different organizations (NASA and Hadley are two prominent ones) publishing different datasets.
But, I was referring to the published forecasts, and how they've compared to actual history that we can measure, not to current forecasts for the next 80 years.
A column on Carbon Brief (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/) attempts to compare earlier forecasts to history through 2017. For instance, the forecast published in the 1990 IPCC report projected mean warming from 0.18C in 1990 to 0.84C in 2017, or an increase of 0.66C. He claims NOAA shows an actual increase over this period from 0.26C to 0.71C, or an increase of 0.45C - about 32% less warming than this model. The data series I downloaded from NOAA shows an increase from 0.47C in 1995 to 0.9C in 2017, or an increase of 0.43C - about the same increase as he reports, but with different values. I think this is because NOAA at some point re-baselined their data - effectively resetting the zero point, but with similar year to year changes, at least for this time period.
The writer of the column looks at the changes from 1970 to 2017, but this is very odd - the temperature data from 1970 to 1990 was history by the time this forecast was published; it was the input that went into the model. Any model should be able to match history. Comparing the model's output to 20 years of history (where the model was tweaked to match the history) plus 27 years of forecast will make any model look great.
The IPCC used to show older forecasts as well as newer ones in their periodic reports, but they stopped doing this when "actual" temperature rise was consistently falling below the lower limits of previous forecasts. This again makes it hard to compare previous forecasts to either actual results or newer forecasts.
So, I'm not really interested in the current forecast for the year 2100. I want to know what that model, published in 1995 (or 2000, or whatever year it was published) said would happen by 2021, because we can check that model against what actually happened in 2021. The answer, for the models I've checked, is a lot less warming than was predicted.
This isn't a topic I've done actual research on, Mr. Smith, and I appreciate the links. I get embroiled in a back and forth like this perhaps once a year, so I'm neither bored nor expecting to keep up. But let me note a couple of points, responding to yours.
You cite that NOAA's decadal rate increase from 1981/2021 should be ~0.72C, but is actually ~0.56C. Looking at the dataset you link to, this seems to me clearly an artifact of noise: if you had measured 1982/2020 the increment would have been ~0.79C. (2021 was a La Niña year.) The annual dataset does not smooth the curve, and that will account for the disparity; NOAA is surely reading the trendline rather than comparing the termini.
The Carbon Brief article is very informative, but it does not show consistent over-estimation of warming in the models of the late 20th c., as you suggest. It shows a balance between under- and over-estimation. It concludes: "Climate models published since 1973 have generally been quite skillful in projecting future warming. While some were too low and some too high, they all show outcomes reasonably close to what has actually occurred . . ."
If we look at the two IPCC reports from the 1990s, the 1990 IPCC estimate of warming was 17% too high (compared to 2017 observations), while the 1995 estimate was 28% too low.
Focusing on the 1995 estimate, which is the one I was discussing in my last comment, the NOAA anomaly for 1995-2017 rose ~0.43C as you say, which is consistent with the estimate of the recent warming rate as averaging 0.18C (0.32F)/decade. Thus the interval of 1995-2017 shows the warming rate one would expect from NOAA retrospective figures, which is more warming, not less, than the IPCC predicted. You say you want to know what the 1995-IPCC predicted anomaly for 2021 would be, and I calculate that as ~0.60C. The NOAA data figure (1995/2021) shows much less warming: 0.37C--but, again, 1995 was an El Niño year and 2021 featured La Niña. If the years were 1996/2020 the figure would be 0.66C, somewhat more warming than the NOAA trend. Only the trendline matters, and the trendline seems very close to the 1995 report.
Thanks for your reply.
Let me explain why I'm not interested in any of the forecast data from before the forecast was published. The forecasts are based on models, which are based on historical data. The models include a great deal of theoretical detail on things like heat budget, greenhouse effect, interactions between sea, land and air, thermal inertia, and many other things I don't pretend to know. They use historical data to estimate past temperatures, and then estimates for future values of this data to forecast the future. The model output is then compared to observed historical data, and the parameters are adjusted (they say "tuned)") to get the past model output to match the past observed data.
When business analysts do this, they call the adjustments a "plug" variable. It is used to account for all the errors in the model. The problem is, you can't really assume that the "plug" will stay consistent when you look to the future, because it's just a "plug" to make the past data match.
So, when Mr. Hausfather of Carbon Brief looks at "forecast" outputs from 1970 to 2017, he's comparing the model output to a mix of data that was already history when the forecast was published, plus unknown future data. I'm not impressed by matching the historical part of the data, because the model was "tuned" to match the historical part of the data. For the extreme example, his most recent forecast (5th IPCC Report) was published in 2013. 43 of the 47 years he looked at were already history before the forecast was published, and the model was tuned to match the model output to the history. The model was built to match the model output to this history. Only 4 years' output was really forecast.
I could build a "model" based on any data series with a trend, and get it to match the historical data pretty closely. I could use US population, retail price of navel oranges, average square footage of new houses, or the S&P 500 stock index - any data series that I can get for the appropriate years. All of these things were increasing, and so was the global temperature anomaly. If I use two or three variables, I can get a tighter fit. Now, presenting this as a scientific model would be scientific fraud. I don't claim that the modelers are doing anything like this. But, their forecasts are only worth something if they can do better than such a simplistic model. And "doing better" doesn't mean explaining the past, unless they were forced to build the model with no historical data, but that's not how they work.
So, when looking at the climate models, performance since 1973 is irrelevant, except for the forecast published in 1973. Let's go back to the 1990 IPCC report. To reduce "noise" in the actual data, I'll use a 3-year average, where 1970 is the average of 1968, 1969, and 1970 readings. According to Mr. Hausfather, the IPCC model increased from -.016 in 1970 to 0.180 in 1990, and .926 in 2020, for an increase of .746 from 1990 to 2020. The NOAA series increases from .01 in 1970 to .36 in 1990 and .91 in 2020, for an increase of .55 from 1990 to 2020 - again less than the forecast, but by 26%, not 32% (due to the smoothing).
I'll apply the same approach to the 1995 forecast. In this case, Mr. Hausfather claims the "forecast" starts in 1993 - I'll take his word that the model wasn't updated between 1993 and 1995. This model forecast an increase from .223 in 1993 to .853 in 2020, for an increase of .63. The (rolling average) NOAA series increases from .363 in 1992 to .81 in 2020, for an increase of .547 - 14% less than the forecast..
Now, Mr. Hausfather calculates different differences. He claims to be using a NASA series for the "actual" data, and provides a link. I followed the link, but couldn't find any data - it may not be there any more - his column is 5 years old now. Also, he starts his comparison period in 1970, not the time the forecast was published.
But the key point is that the only meaningful measure compares the "forecast" part of the model output to the actual data that showed up after the forecast was made.
Agreed, though there is still significant value in curbing the marginally easiest emissions first, especially because clean tech is always progressing and so the most difficult emissions to get rid of will be much easier to replace years from now.
For example, it makes a lot of sense to shut down coal plants in Poland right now and leave thorough decarbonisation of heavy industry for when we have better green hydrogen technology.
I don't think I quite agree with this. I get your points that, ultimately we all have to go to zero and that personal choices to use less carbon isn't the way we are going to get there. At the same time, I think that per capita carbon use is a reasonable measure to look at, as it can help determine how well government policy is working to eliminate carbon consumption.
After all, if I told you that Monaco's carbon production was half that of the US, your take away wouldn't be that Monaco was doing better than the US. That metric would either tell us that US was doing great or Monaco had made some really, really bad decisions. The same is true with aggregate comparisons between the US and China, just to a lesser extent. All else being equal, if China is producing the same amount of carbon as the US despite having the 4-5x the population, that is a sign that China is doing better in limiting its overall carbon footprint.
The problem is that all else is not equal.
First, derivatives matter. China's carbon trajectory is going up while the US's carbon trajectory is going down. This suggests that the US is taking this fight more seriously and, unless China changes its priorities, we aren't stopping climate change.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the reason why China has a lower per capita carbon production isn't because it is intentionally more environmentally friendly than the US, it is because it is poorer than the US. If we wanted to hit China's per capita carbon emissions, we could probably do so nearly overnight by crashing the economy or increasing taxes (and then burning the revenues) to the point where the median US income was in line with China ($3,500 per year). The problem is that that would be an awful strategy. Our goal (which you point out is an achievable goal) should be to hit net zero, while increasing (or at least maintaining) current standards of living.
Ultimately, I would say that neither aggregate nor per per capital carbon emissions are the right metric. Rather the right metric is carbon emissions per unit of GDP and, on that metric, we are blowing China out of the water.
"China's carbon trajectory is going up while the US's carbon trajectory is going down. This suggests that the US is taking this fight more seriously"
Actually, it suggests that the economics of natural gas for electricity generation beat the economics of coal. Once federal policy allowed natural gas beginning in 1988, gas was the fuel of choice, gradually replacing coal. This has nothing to do with any fight against climate change.
What happened 1988?
In 1987. Congress repealed the prohibition on using natural gas for electric power generation.
Good to know! Why did it exist in the first place?
As part of the general idea that the government could manage the economy, natural gas prices for interstate sales were set by federal regulation starting in the 1950s. Prices were not allowed to rise, so customers paid the same price for gas in 1974 they had paid in 1959. Demand had increased, but supply had not increased as much, so shortages developed. Because intrastate prices were not regulated but interstate prices were, producers could sell their gas within their own state for higher prices, and did not ship gas to other states. People in Chicago and New York (and others) who used gas for heat could not get gas at all. Rather than allow gas prices to rise (which would have been politically unpopular), the government tried to ensure supply by restricting industrial uses of gas - including banning gas for power generation. They (slowly) started deregulating prices in 1978, eventually ending price regulation and use restrictions in 1987. Supply increased. Power generators weren't building much new capacity at the time, but when they started serious building in the mid to late 1990s, gas was the fuel of choice.
Thank you for the explanation! Looks like the 14775th case of "Try to reduce prices by price controls, create perverse incentives in the process, make production unprofitable, be surprised about supply shortages, accept that the policy is bad and liberalize market OR be Venezuela.
This has a whole lot to do with a fight against climate change.
Let me be more explicit: switching from coal to natural gas for electricity generation was driven entirely by economics, with decisions made in the 1988-2001 period. At this time, no one in government or industry was even pretending to make such decisions based on climate change.
The US may have lucked into this, but, if they did, they lucked in to the right answer, or at least a better answer than continuing to burn coal.
Natural gas would have been the choice earlier, except there was an actual law enacted in 1974 that prohibited using natural gas for electric power. This was done because natural gas supplies were low, and constrained supplies had caused price spikes and outages to residential customers who used it for heating and cooking. This was a political effort to protect consumers. And a good example of why such decisions should be left out of politics as much as possible.
I think you are over thinking this. We need to stop emitting carbon, or at least admit as little as possible. That means everyone should be aiming at using carbon in the most efficient way possible. And as they say, the people who are going to be most effected by climate change are those that are already the worst off, so the mere fact that developed countries are making an effort at this is already redistribution.
I'll also add that, while I think Climate Change is a high priority, it isn't the only priority. I think the best measure for how a country is doing in fighting climate change is carbon/GDP. If you want to point out a particular policy is going to reduce carbon/GDP at the expense of causing a bunch of people to starve, we should consider that, but, at that point, we aren't just looking at climate change, we are considering other priorities.
Agreed with almost everything here except I honestly don’t think oil and coal companies are useful targets to demonize at this point either. Energy is life and people have next to no tolerance for higher energy prices. Put the focus squarely on clean energy abundance and we will eventually stop using dirty fuels despite how compelling they are in terms of energy density, portability and immediate safety.
Renewable alternatives are very important but you don't get to net zero without sacrifice and international cooperation. Today's high oil prices are only due to oil producers management of supply and demand to maximize their profit, the cheapest oil on the planet is still very cheap to produce and there's a lot of it. You will never be able to innovate around all the ways oil is used today without some global carbon price. And to get buy-in from China, India and other poorer countries there needs to be some fairness in per-capita terms.
Are you sure we need to get to zero per capita? Is that even possible? I thought we needed to get to two or three. Per capita is relevant still.
And I don't think there's an equivalence in moralistic thinking between austerity and this. People who worry about climate are right, they're not choosing this position because they think we're living too well. Not mostly anyway. When you start out from a position of high emissions, yes you are more to 'blame'. But the easier it is to cut too. Much like it's easier to improve if you barely pass a test, just study harder. But if you got 95%, it's really tough to get to 100%.
True but big fat SUVs and cities built for highways are still gonna emit a lot even if it's all electric (15-30% of lifecycle emissions is from manufacturing). So some ways of life are less compatible with net zero. I agree that changing them would not be a loss (health gains from walkable cities, etc.), and in fact can accelerate GDP growth (capital invested in faster growing industries than incumbent), but will be painful for some, without doubt. And more so if there is a national identity built around the automobile.
"True but big fat SUVs and cities built for highways are still gonna emit a lot even if it's all electric (15-30% of lifecycle emissions is from manufacturing)."
Not if you decarbonize manufacturing too. And manufacturing does, indeed, also have to be decarbonized.
Interesting article, but I think there are a few conceptual problems.
"Global net zero means that all countries’ total emissions have to come down to net zero. It also means that all countries’ per capita emissions have to come down to net zero." This statement is untrue because negative emissions are possible (either via carbon removal technology or afforestation). In practice, this will more likely involve developed nations continuing to emit carbon while developing nations plant trees than the reverse, so your statement will probably be less wrong in a cost-optimised world than the view you are arguing against.
However even if every country is required to get to net zero separately, the rate at which they should do so may be very different; if you assign everyone a carbon budget and require them to get to net zero before spending it all, the rate of decarbonisation should be highest in those with the highest per-capita emissions. So per-capita emissions gives the urgency of a particular area or region getting to net zero for an equitable transition. There is no "maximum speed" short of immediately stopping all fossil fuel burning immediately, so we are always in a world of tradeoffs. To the extent that renewable energy is cheapest, it's clear that everyone should adopt it immediately, irrespective of their carbon targets. But it's not clear that we need to do anything about these situations, since believing this basically implies that the problem will fix itself. In practice just because renewable energy is profitable on the margin under some financial assumptions doesn't guarantee it is for those with higher interest rates, low project security and government corruption in particular, which unfortunately is the case in many regions with low per-capita emissions. So per capita emissions are still useful input for deciding where to inject investment and infrastructural support for these nominally free opportunities to be realised.
Do you think that framing it in terms of ‘per capita emissions’ also ignores the role of technology in reducing emissions (I.e. this is a ‘person issue’ rather than something a bit more abstract)?